Grilled Sausage Sandwich

Hot off the grill, sausages like these make a great dinner. There's something satisfying about the simple perfection of a well-cooked sausage, a tubular container just waiting for us to bite into. This helps explain why every nation on earth, it seems, has their own sausages and why the diversity in what is available out there is so great.

People can and will eat a lot of sausages, particularly if they have been grilled. More than they had been planning to, and we all know that that will happen, so we all generally grill a lot of sausages when we are out there grilling.

If there are any left over from this grilling frenzy, put them away in the refrigerator and treat them like the treasures they are. They will be just as good in the future as they are now. Nothing has been wasted. Cooking more than enough sausages for dinner last night is like making an investment in the future, one, unlike so many others, that is sure to pay off.

Then later in the week pull them out and make a great sandwich. Here are some suggestions about how to do that.

Simple and quick to put together.

Grilled sausage sandwich.

Here's what remains from the dinner we had earlier in the week, a single sausage and half a grilled tomato.

By themselves, not much. But humble as this may seem we have the makings of a great sandwich right here before us. The man who gave his name to meat between bread, the Earl of Sandwich, would know what we are talking about.

The pickle is new to the game here but adds a lot when we get to the actual eating.

Sourdough bread makes the best sandwich. If we have some time, the sourdough bread should be grilled. This adds a dimension to its already great flavor and makes it an even more suitable companion for the grilled sausage and the grilled tomato.

In this case, however, we were in a bit of a hurry, so we had to make do without grilling the bread. It's not that other types of bread wouldn't do well here with the sausage and the tomato also. Even a regular old hot dog bun can be used if for some reason that is the only thing you can find in your cupboard. Maybe even whole wheat or rye? Pumpernickel? These other types also would benefit from a trip to the grill.

Here the sourdough bread is slathered with Dijon mustard, a delicious type of mustard that goes particularly well with a sausage like this one..

The tomato goes in the center, between the two halves.

Here is what the final assembly looks like, ready to be eaten.

Trust me, the tomato is in there. Trust me, the Dijon mustard is slathered on the bread in there. Trust me, this is going to be delicious.

The sausage shape, of course, goes perfectly with the baguette shape. Perhaps baguettes were invented by bakers just to hold the sausages they were enamored of -- other uses were developed latter. Could be. We can chew on this idea while we are munching on the sandwich her.

To drink, try a little red wine, or white, or a simple Arnold Palmer, if you want something soft.

There's not a lot more to say because, if you will excuse me, I am about to take a bite of this. You will remember that I said I was in a hurry.

On to glory!

The traditional saying is that "you don't want to see sausages being made, you just want to enjoy their flavor." Sometimes to this is added that the other thing you don't want to see being made is a new law as the bill passes through Congress (or Parliament, etc).

Well, sausages have been made since men lived in caves, and it would be difficult to expect that something with such an ancient origin lacks anything crude. The part about enjoying the flavor, though, is right on.

Sausages have classical origins as well as primitive ones. They appear in The Odyssey, and Aristophanes made them central to his play The Knights, in which a sausage-vendor replaces a sort of Donald-Trump-like character (should the Donald ever achieve power). Aristophanes is probably also the source of the comparison between making sausages and making laws, for he compares the politics of his day to the boiling of sausage meet.

Real Meal. Unlike fancy food mags, where images are hyped and food itself is secondary, all pix shown here are from a real meal, prepared and eaten by me and my friends. No throwing anything away till perfection is achieved. This is the real deal --- a Real Meal.